this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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This really does come off as victim blaming.
The blame for the atrocities of Nazism is squarely on the Nazis, and their instigators and enablers, not average Joe who wants his kids to grow up with a father more than he wants to grab a rifle to shoot Hitler.
I'd say the blame is primarily shared between two groups, the people who create the conditions for Nazism to flourish, the victorious Triple Entente elites, or today's billionaires, and of course the opportunistic genocidal maniacs themselves, like Hitler, Trump, Netanyahu, who ride that wave into power and channel it into hate towards the weak.
Of course, the average Nazi is culpable too, but they are victims too. Both of those can be true.
Yeah it's worth remembering that the US and soviet union really only fought the nazis because the axis powers attacked them. Had hitler just taken over europe and not moved east, had japan not attacked the US, it's very possible we'd be living in a very different world right now
The quote is basically trying to say that if you just go along with the Nazis because you don't want to cause trouble, then you might as well be a Nazi too. It doesn't shift the blame away from Nazis, it just increases the scope of what is considered a Nazi.
70 million people died, but the Nazis were victims?
Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
Average Fritz was a victim, despite the fact that he might have been a perpetrator as well.
He fought through The War To End All Wars to come back to an economy where if he worked in a coffee shop he could not afford to drink the coffee he made, while French and British tourists were laughing at how cheap the prices were. And then the only party telling him that it wasn't his fault happened to be called the NSDAP. He didn't have much education, but what he had was indoctrination since his childhood that he was a loyal subject of the Kaiser, and thus joining the Communists would have been unthinkable.
Of course, that led him to be conscripted again, it led him to do unthinkable things... again, just as he did in the previous apocalyptic war. So of course he was the bad guy, and if people like him didn't do as people like him do, it would have been avoidable. But he has been victimized himself.
This complacency to take individual responsibility is why it’s happening again.
No, the critical mass of dispossessed uneducated people who see no other way of communicating that they can't see a future is why it's happening again.